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  • The Promise of Cinema: German Film Theory, 1907–1933 ed. by Anton Kaes, Nicholas Baer, and Michael Cowan
  • Alexander Erik Larsen (bio)
The Promise of Cinema: German Film Theory, 1907–1933 Edited by Anton Kaes, Nicholas Baer, and Michael Cowan University of California Press, 2016

The Promise of Cinema: German Film Theory, 1907–1933 Edited by Anton Kaes, Nicholas Baer, and Michael Cowan University of California Press, 2016

Many readers will approach this book's title with incredulity, wondering if German film theory written over a roughly twenty-five-year period can pinpoint and articulate film's generic "promise." I sincerely hope that no one rejects this book prematurely for its provocative self-description; The Promise of Cinema is a remarkable resource for the study of early German film, aesthetic modernism, media theory, and film studies in general. However, beyond making a substantial promise to the reader, the title also threatens to occlude this volume's diverse contents and purposes. Neither an edited collection of essays on early German film theory nor a traditional anthology of lengthy theoretical writings, Promise collects numerous brief excerpts drawn from a broad range of primary source documents. Many of these selections appeared in Germany's film periodicals, of which, as a note in the introduction states, there were at least 160 in 1930 (7)! Kaes, Baer, and Cowan have dug into the immense archives containing these materials, in many instances translating, for the first time into English, influential and revealing writings on film in the German-speaking world. Although Promise contains many excerpts from writers traditionally associated with film theory in the period (Kracauer, Balázs, Benjamin, Lukács, Adorno, etc.), its sense of "theory" reaches far beyond philosophical aesthetics and the Frankfurt School. Instead, the term suggests any reflection that engaged film's emerging potential as a revolutionary medium and social force. Theory is here the attempt to think cinema as a distinctive form that promised or threatened to shape the future in diverse ways. The editors have thus richly assembled their collection from a range of disciplinary, professional, political, technical, and intellectual voices and contexts, all of which anxiously considered film's dynamic rise. Rather than containing cinema's definitive "promise" or secret, these texts are linked by a common engagement with the idea that cinema promised modernity something novel and transformative.

The breadth, variety, and diversity of views emerging from this archival approach will make Promise an invaluable resource for scholars and students interested in the immense impact of film on German life in the period. While many readers will not—as with any other collection or anthology—read the book from cover to cover, I can attest that doing so is highly interesting and informative. In the same subsection one finds, for example, an anonymous reflection on the aesthetic effects of movie theater decor and architecture; an excerpt from the first German doctoral thesis on film—a sociological study of class and film consumption; and renowned German novelist Alfred Döblin's condemnation of the cinema as a mindless plebian dissipation. Like most of the excerpts composing the volume, each of these [End Page 161] is no more than two or three pages; but because of careful editorial selections, the resulting readings convey a distinctive perspective on cinema and its milieu. Selections focus on topics such as film's pedagogical potential, its moral dangers, its usefulness for scientific and medical science, aesthetic novelty, commercial opportunities, and political possibilities. Each selection is prefaced with a brief and helpful introduction by the editors. Although there is some unavoidable repetition of perspective, many of these nodes contain writings from diametrically opposed positions. In one subsection titled "The Mobilization of the Masses," one finds a piece by Oscar A. H. Schmitz critiquing Battleship Potemkin as "Tendentious Art." The next selection is Walter Benjamin's blistering denouncement of Schmitz's review, summarized as "artillery from the arsenal of bourgeois aesthetics" (357). Such pairings are common in Promise, and the editors' introductions frequently point out connections between selections, helping to form useful contrasts and comparisons with materials throughout the collection.

With a daunting 287...

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